Sharing supplies and/or panic-buying: a cross-cultural investigation on prosociality and moral identity at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas there are prosocial exemplars that deserve respect, the crisis has also accentuated the self-interested side of people, such as the reported panic-buying in grocery stores around the world. Drawing inferences from the stress and coping framework, we argue that the seemingly bipolar community responses (prosocial vs. self-focused) were both coping strategies elicited by pandemic-induced anxiety and stress. We also investigated the effect of moral identity on prosocial and self-interested behavior in different cultures.

Hypotheses: We hypothesized that stronger threat perception “pushed” people to engage in both prosocial acts (donating/sharing items) and self-interested behavior (panic-buying), while moral identity “pulled” people toward more prosocial and less self-interested behavior. We also predicted prosocial acts to have a stronger positive effect on psychological wellbeing than panic-buying.

Sample: We recruited via online platforms 916 participants (Mage=47.36, SD=15.33; 49.9% female) residing in the United Kingdom(UK), the United States(US), Germany(DE), and Hong Kong(HK).

Design: Cross-cultural data was collected from April 9 to May 14, 2020 through an online survey that measured prosocial (e.g.,donation) and self-interested (e.g.,hoarding) behavior. Countries were selected to represent the wide spectrum of culture-level individualism-collectivism, with UK and US being the most individualistic, followed by Germany and Hong Kong.

Results: Whereas stronger threat perception was associated with both more sharing and hoarding items, benevolent moral identity was associated positively with the former but not the latter behavior. We also observed cross-cultural differences: both effects were stronger in more individualistic (UK, US) countries than less individualistic (HK, DE) ones. Additionally, psychological wellbeing was associated with prosocial acts only.

Contribution: The findings reject the simple dichotomy of “good” or “bad” people/behavior amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether people respond to a major crisis with altruistic or self-interested behavior depends on situational (threat perception), dispositional (moral identity), and cultural (individualism/collectivism) factors.